HISTORICAL RESUME 
Baroneo, a celebrated Lombardy (Italy) physician, appears to have been 
among the first to seriously consider the nature and cause of serious typhoid¬ 
like epidemics which had been noted by poultry raisers even before his time. 
Together with Miocchi and Brugnatelli, he examined with considerable care 
the extensive epidemics which occurred among poultry in Lombardy betweeen 
the years of 1789 and 1798, and which were commonly referred to by the poul- 
trymen of the Turin district under the name “calcinaccio,” and by the Pie- 
montese as “Causinera.” Somewhat later, similar epidemics in Piemonte 
were studied by Brugnone and Toggia. In view of the lack of bacteri¬ 
ological knowledge and technique in these early years, it is, of course, clear 
that there are few data, save the description of the clinical features of the 
malady, to serve as a basis of connection with cholera-like diseases of poultry 
as we know them at the present day; and it is therefore impossible definitely 
to say whether they represented true fowl cholera or some other disease. But 
in view of the circumstances that when advances in bacteriological knowledge 
and technique finally did permit a certain degree of differentiation, the non¬ 
cholera type of infection appeared to be the prevailing malady of the Italian 
provinces, and it can perhaps be justifiably assumed that, even in earlier 
years, it was a well established poultry scourge in these sections of southern 
Europe, whence much of our own poultry has been derived. 
Lemaistre was undoubtedly the first to refer to one of the epidemic diseases 
of poultry as typhus or typhoid (“Epizootie (typhus) des Gallinaces”). He 
observed extensive epidemics in the Haute-Vienne in 1832, 1849, and again in 
1864. He gives an excellent description of the symptoms and pathological 
manifestations of the malady, and speculates regarding the probable cause. 
He considers in turn the feeding, the housing, the range conditions, and the 
possibility of climatic alterations, but sees in them no causal agency. As 
might have been expected in those early days, he finally arrives at the agency 
of miasms. He reports that he, himself, felt unwell after the autopsy of 
several sick birds in a small close room, and believed it might have been due 
to the absorption of miasms. He considered the possibility of danger to man 
from eating the flesh of diseased fowls, but stages that the peasants, when 
observing the birds to become sick, commonly kill and eat them; and he 
concludes no illness has probably resulted, although he recommends other¬ 
wise. It was several years after Lemaistre’s observations that the actual 
causative agents of the disease was recognized. 
In 1877, Joannes again described the so-called “typhus” of birds. He dif¬ 
ferentiated between the “local enzootic typhus (simple septicaemia),” in 
which the malady did not appear to extend itself, and the epizootic typhus 
which became easily disseminated “through villages, departments, and even 
provinces.” The bacteriology of these disease types does not receive ample 
consideration. 
Megnin, in 1877, studied certain epidemics in poultry which he undertook 
to separate from cholera, and which he called “Septicaemia.” This view of a 
disease distinct from cholera is in harmony with the view of most of the 
Italian School at that time, though opposed by Perroncito. Lucet believed the 
epidemic of Megnin corresponded in every respect with those of Lemaistre 
and Benion. 
* Unless otherwise indicated this Historical Resume is taken from the comprehensive 
review presented by Hadley in Bulletin 174 of the Rhode Island State College, May, 1918. 
